The Art of Disagreement: Embracing Conflict for Leadership Success

Around a decade ago, I was leading a campaign team of seven people. A few days before one of our meetings, three team members individually expressed their concerns about another member, (let’s call him Mark), who was micromanaging them condescendingly. Fearful that confronting this conflict directly would distract us, I told them it was just Mark's style, so we should ignore it and focus on our work. However, within the subsequent months, two of those three team members left. This led to a significant conflict and an open argument during one of the meetings, resulting in the team's collapse. Avoiding conflict by not having difficult conversations led to an even larger conflict and ultimately the team’s failure. I learned my lesson!

Here are some of the most common misconceptions about conflict:

🚫 Conflict is Negative: Many believe conflict is inherently bad and should be avoided. In reality, conflict is a catalyst for addressing disagreements, and even positive change and innovation.

❓ Misunderstandings Cause Conflict: It’s often thought that conflicts arise solely from misunderstandings. While this can be true, conflicts can also stem from differing values, interests, or resource competition.

✔️ Resolution should make everyone happy: There’s a belief that all conflicts can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Sometimes, the best outcome is a compromise or agreeing to disagree. Sometimes to move forward, you have to be ok with disappointing some people.

🔊 Conflict Should Be Polite: The idea that managing conflict should always be orderly and polite can lead to insincere exchanges. Productive conflict management can be messy and chaotic, as it often involves addressing uncomfortable truths and high emotions.

Managing conflict requires you to know how to have a difficult conversation:

✍️ Prepare thoroughly - jot down your key points, anticipate potential reactions from meeting attendees, and identify alliances to understand what kind of support clusters might emerge during the meeting.

🙋‍♂️ Set the norms - Before initiating a difficult conversation, it's beneficial to establish a set of ground rules regarding how the conversation will be conducted (who speaks when, how you will communicate with each other, etc.). Ensure all perspectives are acknowledged!

👤 Depersonalize - conflict is seldom personal. It's more about the roles individuals or groups represent to each other in a specific context. It’s about the role you play in a particular team, project, or organization. People rarely dislike you personally; they usually perceive you as an obstacle to their goals. Develop multiple interpretations of the conflict's origin & what you might symbolize to those who disagree with you.

☝️ Adopt a curious mindset - don't judge; instead, try to understand the other perspective by asking questions. Explore the source of the conflict to expand your view and the collective understanding, aiming to get to the core of the disagreement.

Adaptive Leadership (Ronald Heifetz) provides several tools for managing a productive conflict:

🎼 Orchestrate the Conflict: Leaders should build structures that allow for passionate disagreement and manage the conflict without becoming overwhelmed by it. If you as a leader notice something, try to strategically surface it (bring it up), so that the conflict doesn’t stay in the background, slowly detonating team dynamics and relationships. Conflicts need to surface!

🛡️ Create a Holding Environment: You need to create a space where people feel safe to tackle divisive questions. This holding environment is formed by a network of relationships that bond people together, allowing them to address difficult issues without falling apart.

🌡️ Control the Temperature: Monitoring meeting tension is vital. Too much can cause unproductive conflict, too little may show unexpressed thoughts. The leader's role is to observe and intervene, either by reducing or increasing the tension, to reach a balance where productive dialogue takes place and real work gets accomplished.

📚 Learn more about Adaptive Leadership in this well-structured, easy-to-read book: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

Until next time, have that difficult conversation you know you need to have. It will be uncomfortable but also worth it!

Nikola